A R C H I V E1 9 9 0  
.9
  Shelley Cook
House
  USA 1990
Videotape, 16:30, colour & black-and-white, stereo
The rusted bars over the window stare at us rarefied, weathered by the years in the deserted house. The floors, dusty and bare; the walls, marked by time, showing fine reliefs like wrinkles in an old face. A small high window reveals fragments of a bed scene, sheets over the naked bodies of a man and a woman, lovers, like a time-piece coming together and moving apart again, waiting for the next impulse. When they disappear, a black cat comes and takes over the bed, until they reappear and waves gently mix in over them with their being, with their presence, whilst a bird sings in the blossoming branches. But the house is deserted, the bars rusted, the sound soft from the hand that glides across, feeling for memories, beauty, the neglected, the sense of desolation.

Sonja van der Burg

With: Shelley Cook, Joe Goldsmith, Anne Morgan